It seems Microsoft are the real cancer in that case - a company does well, Microsoft's radar picks it up and then:

Microsoft: "We would like to buy you"
some open source 'company': "Nah, were happy how we are thanks"
Microsoft:"OMG!!! I cant believe you said that!!! you are so sued!!!!"

Surely Microsoft cant just force companies to be bought? I know people need money to get along in life, but if companies bowed down to a seriously generous offer, wouldnt it be a huge waste of what they accomplished? Theyve just fed their "enemy" something obviously worthwhile, only for it to be stamped down and forgotten about by Microsoft as something they could live without.

If they do buy out everyone, then were back to them being a dominant monopoly where no one can compete.

pootman wrote:Let's be fair to Microsoft, I seriously doubt they'd waste money on a company just to bury its products.

Eh? I thought that was what a lot of big comapanies did, buy up inventors patents and small-time potential competitors specifically to bury them. Didn't Dyson complain specifically about that in one of his self-justifying (but nonetheless largely true) rants.

Generally MS are more subtle than that.
I have seen several companies that were "Microsoft partners", supposedly " helped" by MS to develop their software, suddenly there is a MS product that does what their software does, and they are no longer" supported" by MS.
There are several court cases in motion about this, trouble is, by the time the court has decided, the former "partner" is often bankrupt.

If you want to sup with the devil, use a long spoon.

The sig between the asterisks is so cool that only REALLY COOL people can even see it!

What is M$ thinking? Like: we've purchased your project, so we've bought your free spare time working on it as well? Get real! If M$ buys a company with a community-based development model, the dev's will leave. Maybe not immidiately, but leave they will... To start a new, identical project, community based and therefor not for sale M$ should know by now, that no matter how much money they spend, the dev's still hold the copyright on their code, so M$ will not be able to prevent these dev's to use their code again. Besides, it's GPL'd, or another FOSS licence...

Today's M$ credo: "If you can't beat them, buy them!" But M$ will never be able to buy a community spirit, or a conviction for Open Source

One of Microsoft's biggest purchases ran on open source software. It continued this way for about two years whilst they worked out a way to stuff it. And it has only taken another 3 years to "disappear" after changing to Microsoft Windows Servers.

Anyone remember a little company called Hotmail? The originator of web based email!

ollie wrote:One of Microsoft's biggest purchases ran on open source software. It continued this way for about two years whilst they worked out a way to stuff it. And it has only taken another 3 years to "disappear" after changing to Microsoft Windows Servers.

Anyone remember a little company called Hotmail? The originator of web based email!

Yes, I still use Hotmail as one of my e-mail accounts. Microsoft keeps moving features into Live and out of "classic" Hotmail to force the issue, but I've no interest in tying my MEPIS to Microsoft. Once I get all my Windows astronomy (imaging) software running under WINE, I won't be booting into Windows as often as I do now - 2 to 6 times per month.

Lamb0 wrote:Yes, I still use Hotmail as one of my e-mail accounts. Microsoft keeps moving features into Live and out of "classic" Hotmail to force the issue, but I've no interest in tying my MEPIS to Microsoft. Once I get all my Windows astronomy (imaging) software running under WINE, I won't be booting into Windows as often as I do now - 2 to 6 times per month.

I've found that using a Windows XP installation in a VirtualBox VM for the few times a month I need to see something in Windows the best way to go

I know it needs a license but I get one through work for marking students' work.

PM me if you want a Gmail account to get rid of Hotmail totally. Gmail's spam filtering works wonders, so I use it to "register" sites/products before changing the email address if I don't get a hundred extra spam messages the next day